Knees Bent

Last night in teacher training, I received a new brilliant ‘yoga’ truth.

Your knees needn’t be straight. The actual words from my teacher were: ‘Straight knees in yoga is not so amazing.’
Now, I know already that in yoga, being flexible isn’t all that amazing. You can be super flexible to a detriment and not have any strength. Or you can be super strong and have low mobility of your joints.

But knees? Bent? It’s okay? Huh?

Why do we have this desire, this obsession to straighten our knees? Where does this come from? Perhaps the straight line looks nice, or growing up we see dancers as having straight knees.

For the past 7 years, in (will omit Sanskrit for ease of reading) dangle, downward dog, wide-legged forward bend, warrior 3, etc. I have been berating myself for my bent knees. Well, I never would have told you that. I would have said: ‘you can’t do a yoga pose wrong’, which is correct, but, beneath it all, in my brain, I still believed deep deep down: ‘my knees should be straight’, ‘i’m not there yet.’

But I was there! I was there all along! What great news. I have been fine all along. And so this lesson translates easily over to real life as does most learnings in yoga. I’m okay where I am. I’m where I need to be. I’m not in control, i’m just here doing the best I can with what i’ve got. And it’s right.